Ex-con advises TCI government on VAT

(TCI Sun): A former Peruvian government minister, who was charged and convicted in his native country on various accounts of high-level corruption, is now one of the chief advisors to the Turks and Caicos Islands Government (TCIG) on tax and revenue matters. Jorge Baca Campodonico was Minister of Economy during former President Alberto Fujimori`s notorious government in Peru. The Supreme Court there, convicted Baca for misappropriating state funds by diverting US$59.4 million from government money to bail out a private bank, ordered him to repay US$666,000 to the state and barred him from holding public office for three years.

Campodonico is now one of the European Union’s team of experts, who is advising the TCI government on how to impose and establish the Value Added Tax (TAX) and other revenue measures.

He recently addressed a meeting of the Turks and Caicos Islands Chamber of Commerce in Providenciales. Campodonico, who was arrested by INTERPOL in Argentina in February 2003, while working for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was slapped with a four-year suspended sentence in 2008 for having protected the affidavits of former presidential advisor Vladimiro Montesinos and for other corrupt matters.

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